Europe – REVOLUTION

Macron wins, but Jupiter has feet of clay

Jérôme Métellus
— France

The re-election of Emmanuel Macron marks a new stage in the crisis of French capitalism. In the second round, taking into account abstentions and blank or invalid ballots, the ‘Jupitarian President’ won the votes of only 38.5 percent of registered voters.

Portugal: The Days of Social Peace Are Over

The apparent social peace in Portugal in recent years – without major uprisings or noteworthy social turmoil – hides a much more complex and bitter reality beneath its fragile surface.

Ukraine: Re-escalation in Donbas — Fight the Oligarchs instead!

Since the signing of the Minsk-2 ceasefire protocols in 2015, the civil war in the Donbas de-escalated from open warfare. However, this did not mean an end to the conflict. The people living next to the battlelines are subject to frequent shelling, not to mention the terror of living in highly militarised areas. Besides this new norm for the people in the conflict region, every year has seen a period of reporting about the “re-escalation of the conflict” from Ukrainian and Western media, and the “threat of the Russian menace advancing”.

European AstraZeneca debacle: mismanagement, misinformation and vaccine diplomacy

A number of countries in Europe halted the use of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine over the past two weeks, due to an unproven (and unlikely) association with blood clots. Following a review by the European Medical Agency, they have now resumed, but this politically driven decision has seriously dented public confidence in the vaccine, which was already low.

Italy: A New Chapter in the Crisis of the System

The inaction of the Giuseppe Conte government in the face of the deepest economic, political and social crisis in Italy since the Second World War had become unbearable for big business. That explains why the figure of Mario Draghi has come to the rescue. It is clear, however, that this bourgeois technocrat has no solutions for the problems facing the Italian workers.

Hungary: Orbán’s popularity slips following repression and crisis

Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán secured his third successive term in the 2018 general election. Now, for the first time since 2010 polls show that the “united opposition” would defeat his party if an election was held today. According to the survey conducted by one of the best known Hungarian pollsters Medián, Fidesz support fell by 6 percent in a single month to 34 percent in December, while the opposition added 2 percent and took over Fidesz at 36 percent.

Polish working women and men fight back against the abortion ban: Down with the Government!

The PiS (Law and Justice Party) government in Poland, led by right-wing Catholics and Nationalists, have for years tried to carry through extreme laws against abortion, under pressure from the Catholic Church. Any attempts so far have been resisted by mass mobilisation of predominantly young and working-class women on the streets.

Poland: Judicial Ban on Abortion is an Attack on the Working Class!

The following statement from our comrades in Poland condemns the Polish judiciary’s ruling to severely limit abortion. The rotten, anti-woman, anti-worker bourgeois regime must be brought down!

Read the original in Polish by Czerwony Front

The 22nd of October 2020 will go down in history as the day when, after years of attacks on women’s rights, the right finally got its way and drastically curtailed the right to abortion in Poland. This time, it was not the legislature or the executive that became a tool in the hands of conservatives, but the judiciary that is so cherished by the opposition.

The Right is leading the movement in Belarus to a dead-end: Is there another way?

As the situation in Belarus unfolds, our comrades once again call on the working class to seize control of their own destinies with independent methods and bodies of struggle.

Contradictions of the political situation in Belarus: a warning

The complexity of the current political moment in Belarus and the active involvement of the working class in the events were described by us in two previous articles (here and here). But now we also have more detailed reports from the scene, much more vividly reflecting both the nature of the mobilisation of the country’s working people and the impact of this mobilisation.